NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST.

‘If we comprehend in one general view the wooded region which includes the whole of the interior of South America, from the grassy steppes of Venezuela to the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, or from 8° north to 19° south latitude, we shall perceive that this connected forest of the tropical zone has an extent unequalled in any other portion of the earth’s surface.

Its area is about twelve times that of Germany.

Traversed in all directions by systems of rivers, in which the minor and tributary streams exceed our Rhine or our Danube in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance of the growth of its trees to the combined influence of great moisture and high temperature.

‘The rivers, with their countless lateral arms, afford the only routes by which the country can be traversed.

Between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, astronomical observations, and, where these were wanting, determinations by compass of the directions of the rivers, respectively showed us that two lonely mission villages might be only a few miles apart, and yet that the monks, when they wished to visit each other, could only do so by spending a day and a half in following the windings of small streams, in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees.

A striking evidence of the impenetrability of particular parts of the forest is afforded by a trait related by an Indian, of the habits of the large American tiger, or panther-like jaguar.

These creatures are often led, by their love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose themselves in such impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no longer hunt along the ground, and live instead in the trees, where they are the terror of the families of monkeys and of the prehensile-tailed viverra, the cercoleptes.

‘On leaving the Island del Diamante, in which Zambos, who speak Spanish, cultivate sugar-canes, we entered on scenes of nature characterized by wildness and grandeur.

The air was filled with countless flocks of flamingoes and other water-birds, which appeared against the blue sky like a dark cloud with continually varying outlines.

The river had here narrowed to between 900 and 1000 feet, and, flowing in a perfectly straight line, formed a kind of canal enclosed on either side by dense wood.

The margin of the forest presents at this part a singular appearance.

In front of the almost impenetrable wall of giant trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there rises from the sandy river beach, with the greatest regularity, a low hedge of sanso, only four feet high, consisting of a small shrub, which forms a new genus of the family of Euphorbiaceæ.

Some slender thorny palms stand next; and the whole resembles a close, well-pruned garden hedge, having only occasional openings at considerable distances from each other, which have doubtless been made by the larger four-footed beasts of the forest to gain easy access to the river.

One sees, more especially in the early morning and at sunset, the American tiger or jaguar, the tapir, and the peccary, lead their young through these openings to the river to drink.

When startled by the passing canoe, they do not attempt to regain the forest by breaking forcibly through the hedge which has been described, but one has the pleasure of seeing these wild animals stalk leisurely along, between the river and the hedge, for four or five hundred paces, until they have reached the nearest opening, when they disappear through it.

In the course of an almost uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 geographical miles on the Orinoco to near its sources, on the Cassiquiare, and on the Rio Negro—and during which we were confined for seventy-four days to a small canoe—we enjoyed the repetition of the same spectacle at several different points, and, I may add, always with new delight.

There came down together, to drink, to bathe, or to fish, groups consisting of the most different classes of animals, the larger mammalia being associated with many coloured herons, palamedeas, and proudly-stepping curassow and cashew birds.

“Es como en el Paraiso,” it is here as in Paradise said, with a pious air, our steersman, an old Indian who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic.

The peace of the golden age was, however, far from prevailing among the animals of this American paradise, which carefully watched and avoided each other.

The capybara, a cang, three or four feet long, is devoured in the rivers by the crocodiles, and on shore by the tiger.

It runs so indifferently, that we were several times able to catch individuals from among the numerous herds which presented themselves.

‘Below the Mission of Santa Barbara de Wuchuna we passed the night as usual, under the open sky, on a sandy flat on the banks of the Rio Apure, closely bordered by the impenetrable forest.

It was not without difficulty that we succeeded in finding dry wood to kindle the fire, with which it is always customary in that country to surround a bivouac, in order to guard against the attacks of the jaguar.

The night was humid, mild, and moonlight.

Several crocodiles approached the shore; I think I have observed these animals to be attracted by fire, like our cray-fish, and many other inhabitants of the water.

The oars of our boat were placed upright and carefully driven into the ground, to form poles from which our hammocks could be suspended.

Deep stillness prevailed; only from time to time we heard the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins, which are peculiar to the Orinoco network of rivers, which followed each other in long lines.

‘Soon after 11 o’clock such a disturbance began to be heard in the adjoining forest, that for the remainder of the night all sleep was impossible.

The wild cries of the animals appeared to rage throughout the forest.

Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians could only recognise those which, after short pauses in the general uproar, were first heard singly.

There was the monstrous howling of the aluates (the howling monkey); the plaintive, soft, and almost flute-like tones of the small sapajous; the snorting grumblings of the striped nocturnal monkey; the interrupted cries of the great tiger, the cuquar or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, of parraquas, and other pheasant-like birds.

When the tigers came near the edge of the forest, our dog, which had before barked incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks.

Sometimes the cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst the high branches of a tree, and was in such case always accompanied by the plaintive piping of the monkeys, who were seeking to escape from the unwonted pursuit.

‘If one asks the Indians why this incessant noise and disturbance arises on particular nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and keeping the feast of the full moon.”

To me it appeared that the scene had probably originated in some accidental combat, and that hence the disturbance had spread to other animals, and thus the noise had increased more and more.

The jaguar pursues the peccaries and tapirs, and these, pressing against each other in their flight, break through the interwoven tree-like shrubs which impede their escape; the apes on the tops of the trees, being frightened by the crash, join their cries to those of the larger animals; this arouses the tribes of birds, who build their nests in communities, and thus the whole animal world becomes in a state of commotion.

Longer experience taught us that it is by no means always the celebration of the brightness of the moon which disturbs the repose of the woods: we witnessed the same occurrence repeatedly, and found that the voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or when, with loud peals of thunder, the flashing lightning illuminated the deep recesses of the forest.

The goodnatured Franciscan Monk, who, although he had been suffering several months from fever, accompanied us, used to say, when fearful on the closing in of night that there might be a thunder-storm, “May heaven grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the forest.”’

Scenes, such as those I have just described, were wonderfully contrasted with the stillness which prevails within the tropics during the noontide hours of a day of more than usual heat.

I borrow from the same journal the recollections of a day at the Narrows of Baraguan:—

‘On the naked rock which formed the shores, we saw only, besides an old withered stem of aubletia, and a new apocinea, a few silvery croton shrubs.

A thermometer rose to 122° Fahrenheit.

All distant objects had wavelike undulating outlines, the effect of mirage; not a breath of air stirred the fine dust-like sand.

The sun was in the zenith, and the flood of light which he poured down upon the river, and which, from a slight rippling movement of the waters, flashed sparkling back, rendered still more sensible the red haze which veiled the distance.

All the naked rocks and boulders around were covered with a countless number of large thick-scaled iguanas, gecko-lizards, and variously-spotted salamanders.

Motionless, with uplifted heads and open mouths, they appeared to inhale the burning air with ecstasy.

At such times the larger animals seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and the herds hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in the clefts of the rocks; but if, in this apparent entire stillness of nature, one listens for the faintest tones which an attentive ear can seize, there is perceived an all-pervading rustling sound, a humming and fluttering of insects close to the ground, and in the lowest strata of the atmosphere.

Everything announces a world of organic activity and life.

In every bush, in the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly.

It is, as it were, one of the many voices of nature, heard only by the sensitive and reverent ear of her true votaries.’— Humboldt’s Aspects of Nature.